Page Designer and Dreamweaver®, which are well-known as Web page authoring tools, provide an edit screen on which an HTML document can be displayed like a Web client's browser screen (hereinafter referred to as “browser-like edit screen”), as well as an edit screen for directly editing source code of the HTML document, so that an editor or author can edit the HTML document efficiently on the browser-like edit screen.
On the other hand, JSP (JavaServer Pages™) documents are stored in the memory of a Web server to generate HTML documents as Web pages. The author can use a code such as <jsp:include> or <jsp:directive.include> in a JSP document to embed any other document in the JSP document.
For convenience of explanation, among documents constituting or creating a Web page, a document in which any other document is to be embedded is called a “parent document”, while the other document to be embedded is called a “child document”.
FIG. 12 shows a display state of a parent document 602 on a browser-like edit screen 601 of a conventional Web page authoring tool 600. A child document is merely indicated as an icon 603, without its specific content, at a position where it is inserted in the parent document 602.
FIG. 13 shows a frame editing screen 610 of a browser type according to the conventional Web page authoring tool 600. The parent document includes an instruction for dividing the browser screen into two flames such as right and left frames and identification of child documents 611, 612 to be embedded in the right and left frames, respectively. Thus, the author can edit two or more child documents embedded in the respective frames of the parent document on the frame editing screen 610 that displays the child documents in a manner similar to an actual browser.
FIG. 14 shows an edit screen 630 of Microsoft® Word. Suppose that a parent document 631 is a Microsoft® Word document while a child document 632 is a document edited in a different application other than Microsoft® Word. In this case, if the author double-clicks on the display area of the child document 632 embedded in the parent document 631, the different application will be started so that the author can edit the child document 632 in the different application. The display area of the child document 632 is limited within a rectangular box 633, that is, the child document can never be displayed in a non-rectangular box. On the other hand, if the child document 632 is also a Microsoft® Word document and is embedded in the parent document 631, the content of the child document 632 turns into the content of the parent document 631. Therefore, even if the embedded text is edited in the parent document 631, the edited content is not reflected in the child document 632.
Japanese Published Patent Application 07-56786 teaches a structured document processor, in which an integrated document is divided into a plurality of document components (e.g., Chapter 1 document component, Chapter 2 document component, . . . ) so that two or more authors can edit each document component while maintaining data consistency with a document component being used as a unit of saving and loading. The structured document processor constructs a tree structure of the integrated document and the document components, controls connections or links between the document components based on the hierarchy of the document components, and manages the logical order (page order) of the document components in the integrated document (see FIGS. 4 and 5 of Japanese Published Patent Application 07-56786).
The browser-like edit screen 601 of the Web page authoring tool 600 shown in FIG. 12 displays only the icon 603 at the embedding position of the child document. Therefore, once the child document is embedded at a specified position in the parent document 602, the author cannot edit these documents on the browser-like edit screen 601 while viewing the display states of the parent document 602 and the child document on the browser screen.
On the other hand, the Web page authoring tool 600 shown in FIG. 13 allows the author to edit, on the frame editing screen 610, the child documents 611 and 612 embedded in the parent document while viewing the display states of the child documents embedded in the parent document, that is, while viewing them on the browser-like edit screen. In this case, however, a form for embedding the child documents 611 and 612 in the parent document is limited to a rectangle. In the Web page frames, the child documents LEFT.html and RIGHT.html are embedded in the parent document using, for example, the following code statement: <FRAMESET COLS=“50%, 50%”>, <FRAME SRC=“LEFT.html”> and <FRAME SRC=“RIGHT.html”>. Thus, neither can the text and images of the parent document itself be displayed, nor the beginning of each child document be located before or behind any character or image in the parent document. Also, <BODY> (tag name) indicating the body of the parent document is not displayed on the frame editing screen 610. The embed-related code for embedding the child document at any structure position in the parent document may be <jsp:include> or <jsp:directive.include>.
Since a form for embedding the child document 632 in the parent 631 on the edit screen 630 of the word processor shown in FIG. 14 is also limited to a rectangle, like the frame editing screen 610 in FIG. 13, it is difficult to set the beginning of the child document 632 at any position in the parent document 631 and hence to display the set position on the edit screen 630. In addition, if the child document 632 is a Microsoft® Word document like the parent document 631 and is edited on the edit screen 631 after embedding the child document 632 in the parent document 631, the edited content is reflected only in the parent document 631, rather than in the child document 632. Therefore, if the child document 632 is to be embedded also in another parent document or at another position in the parent document 631, the child document 632 portion in another parent document or another position in the parent document 631 would have to be reedited separately.
Page Designer and Dreamweaver®, well-known as Web page authoring tools, have a preview screen showing how the web page being edited on the edit screen is displayed on an actual browser screen, and the author can open a browser from the preview screen to check how the document being edited is actually displayed by the browser. However, the author cannot edit the document on the preview screen showing the browser screen image.